The Evening

That night Cass was alone in her Dacha room, watching English Russia Today on her iPad. She knew it was mainly propaganda, but sometimes she liked to go down the rabbit hole. “We all suffer from the same disease,” Cass muttered to herself.

She was always amused at the beautiful presenters sneered delivery of the reports on the West. The gist was, “You think that you are so ethical, but look what you have done. Look you are just as bad as us.”

It upset Cass that the propogandists felt that this was the only way to get at the West. She wondered whether they appreciated that this kind of broadcast showed more of their insecurities and weaknesses than their strengths. Like the weird clever kid in the play ground, who desperately wanted to play but always had to make the other kids feel shit about themselves.

There were faults in The West, there was no denying. There were problems with nationalists, corruption and money laundering and sadly there always would be. Greed, poor management and scapegoating happen in every culture. However rather than ignore the injustice, in the West was reported relatively freely.

Cass wished Russia would have the confidence to extol its greatness rather than its similar poor performance to the West. The West was to blame for this inferiority complex. The Cold War stopped because of Soviet economic collapse, not because of any great victory of Capitalism and the Freeworld.

Cass always thought there was dangerous hubris in this Western Perspective. Poor economic management could happen anywhere. The East Nostalgia for the Soviet System was ever present, even in young people who had never known communism and the Cold War. There were older people who still remember life under Communism being easier. They had secure jobs, homes, health care and food. Fur coats and sticky sweet Crimean champagne really had no meaning when these things are wrenched away from you.

The few had benefited from the collapse of the Iron Curtain, but the majority had not seen much change. In fact the majority’s sense of stability was much worse. This is why it was important to scapegoat the West. Politically Russians had seen no change. Boyar, Chekist, NKVD, FSB were all the same meat, just different gravy. Tsars, Dictators and Presidents were carbon copies of the Immaculate Russian Strong Man. Rip down the old statues and put up new ones. Just make sure you put on a good show and keep on fooling the majority. Above all hold onto power, because they knew all to well what happened to the last guy who was in charge.